Microsoft has announced Education for Cowork, a plugin with ten education-specific skills and 20 ready-to-use tasks for Copilot Cowork. Announced on 20 October, it is rolling out worldwide.

If you haven't used Cowork yet, it's the part of Microsoft 365 Copilot built for multi-step work. You describe the outcome you want, it plans the steps, then it works through them across your Microsoft 365 content.

Skills are packaged instructions that tell it how a particular job should be done. A plugin bundles a set of them together.

Microsoft's case is that a general assistant has no idea how an institution runs. So this plugin is meant to teach Cowork about academic calendars, CPD windows, cohorts, accreditation requirements and course cycles.

The ten skills

The skills cover recurring work across weeks, terms and course cycles. Here they are, with my plain-English version of Microsoft's descriptions:

  • Accessible learning materials: audits learning resources for accessibility.
  • AI rollout for education: plans phased AI adoption across staff roles, mapped against governance requirements, prerequisites and the academic calendar.
  • Discussion insights: picks out patterns in learner discussion and feedback.
  • Evidence package: maps accreditation requirements to the evidence you already hold and flags decisions still outstanding.
  • Governance review: prepares a review of an AI tool before deployment. People still make the approval decision.
  • Instructional continuity: builds substitute packs. In UK terms, that's cover work.
  • Instructional retrospective: helps higher education staff review their own course across terms.
  • Policy change pack: supports rolling out a policy change.
  • Research project brief: pulls together research briefs.
  • Weekly brief: produces a weekly brief for education staff.

Cowork can pick the right skill from your request. Or you can type / in the prompt box and choose one yourself. For example, select the evidence skill and ask:

Map our accreditation requirements to the available institutional evidence. Flag decisions still needed.

The plugin also provides 20 starting prompts under Task ideas, including planning a teaching week and preparing a board briefing. These give staff a starting point for a particular job; the related skills can help keep recurring work up to date.

What you need before you switch it on

Adding the plugin is the easy bit. The licensing needs planning.

  • Every person using it needs a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence.
  • Cowork runs on usage-based billing through Copilot Credits, so you'll need a Cowork spending policy in place too.
  • An admin deploys or allows the plugin in the Microsoft 365 admin centre, under Agents > Tools. Microsoft suggests starting with a pilot group.

Once it's allowed, staff open Cowork, go to Customize > Plugins, browse Roles & Industry and add it. It also needs to be switched on under Sources & Skills.

On governance, Cowork and plugin activity is covered by Microsoft Purview Audit Standard when auditing is enabled. Purview also supports data loss prevention (DLP) for Cowork, but check the policies, licences and settings your organisation actually has in place. Cowork has its own documented feature support, so don't assume every Copilot compliance feature works identically.

Some names use US terminology, including substitute packs. But Microsoft's announcement also mentions trusts and education, health and care plans (EHCPs), so this isn't purely a US offering. It doesn't claim to provide an Ofsted-ready evidence pack.

The underlying jobs will be familiar to UK schools and trusts. Adapt the prompts to your setting and check the results against your own policies and expectations.

The more interesting part might be the template. Cowork plugins use the same package format whether Microsoft, a partner or your own organisation builds them. So a trust could take the shape of the policy change pack and build its own version around its own policy cycle.

Cost is the other big question. Microsoft 365 Copilot is still a paid add-on for most schools and colleges, and usage-based billing is harder to budget for than a flat licence. In practice, I'd expect senior and business teams to get it first.

I'd look hard at the AI rollout skill. Using AI to draft your AI adoption plan is fine as a starting point. But the plan still has to reflect your own risk assessment and DPIA, and a named person has to own it.

The Purview audit trail is good news for anyone who'll be asked "what did the AI actually do?". Check your retention settings and decide who reviews those logs before the pilot starts. A log nobody reads won't help you much.

And if you do pilot it, pick one job that genuinely comes round every term and time it before and after. That'll tell you more than any demo.

Which termly job would you hand to it first?

Sources

Sources checked 26 October 2026.